SchwartzReport: App Five-O Helps Citizens Hold Police Accountable

Something very interesting is happening with social media. It is becoming a sharing venue where people otherwise unconnected can share common experiences of police violence. If this trend takes off, as I think it will, hundreds if not thousands of these confrontation episodes, that normally go largely unremarked except locally, will get posted online where they can be picked up and passed around. This will make it impossible f! or media to ignore them.

Three high school students have developed a mobile app to hold police accountable in communities nationwide. The app, Five-O, is a timely development, since the shooting of Michael Brown last weekend sparked a national conversation about police brutality and law enforcement in the U.S.

Caleb, Ima, and Asha Christian, three siblings from Decatur, Georgia, created Five-O for individuals to document and rate their encounters with police officers. With the app, citizens can discuss the reason behind their police encounters, and what occurred during their interactions. Moreover, individuals can transfer the recorded information to law enforcement, which can be used in cases where legal action is necessary. Five-O allows citizens to input relevant demographic information, including age and race, and rank officers’ level of professionalism.

‘We’d like to know which regions in the US provide horrible law enforcement services as well as highlight the agencies that are highly rated by their citizens. In addition to putting more power into the hands of citizens when interacting with law enforcement, we believe that highly rated police departments should be used as models for those that fail at providing quality law enforcement services,” explained Ima, the eldest of the three siblings.

The mobile app will be available for download on August 18. The Georgia trio hopes that citizens will find its way to communities across the U.S.

Phi Beta Iota: Northern Virginia is blessed with the Fairfax County Police Department, which not only cleaned up Asian and Latino gangs in the 1990’s, but did it without SWAT teams and while continuing to this day a mind-set of community-oriented policing.